No
by Kudzu1
Summary: ARC troopers can resist. ARC troopers can refuse. But is it worth the ultimate sacrifice to disobey?


No  
By Kudzu

_"But there were some...who resisted"  
_Lady Galadriel, _Fellowship of the Ring_

A-51 looked around, surveying his surroundings. The ordinary clone troopers accompanying him and their Jedi General on this mission to Sluis Van walked stiffly around them, their shortened DC-15 carbines held tautly over white-armored chests.

Well, to be fair, perhaps they were not so ordinary. After all, they were clone troopers. And A-51 was sure: clones were hardly ordinary.

In fact, judging by the general reaction of the civilians they had encountered on neutral and hostile worlds outside of the Republic, they were anything _but_ ordinary. A-51 remembered one angry description of them in particular: as abominations.

The Confederacy seemed to have been thrown into chaos as a result of Dooku's death and Grievous's embarrassing defeat over Coruscant mere days ago. The Republic was now intending to press the advantage, and General Kenobi had been dispatched to Utapau to track down the Droid General last he had heard. For all he knew now, Grievous was dead, or Kenobi was. The good General _had_ earned the moniker of "Jedi Killer" for a reason.

And what was to become of the clones when the Wars were over and the Separatists vanquished? Would they become little more than glorified peacekeepers and security officers?

A-51 glanced sideways at his Jedi General, willing himself to simply concentrate on the here and now. Although none of the ordinary - no, not _ordinary_, simply _less unique_ - clones would dare to think such a thought, he couldn't help but resent her naïveté when faced with blasterfire. He had seen it in the Jedi Knight at least a dozen times before. Whenever they were facing wets - organic personnel - she insisted that they try to take them alive. Clone troopers were not usually equipped to do such a thing unless they had been specifically outfitted for capture. And A-51 didn't believe in stun cuffs.

Besides, Grievous had proven that Jedi weren't so omnipotent and immortal after all. Grievous, and Durge, and Asajj Ventress, and Sora Bulq, among many others. They had their flaws, and A-51 wasn't so ready as to accept a Jedi's word as total and complete wisdom from the hands of some supreme deity as he was when he was first activated during the Separatist attack on Kamino.

Then, on the HUD of his helmet visor, there flashed a few tiny little orange blips on his sensor screen. He knew all too well what those meant. He turned to face his commanding officer.

"General Eerin," he said by way of warning.

The Mon Calamarian turned her head to him, her lightsaber in her hand, but not lit. "Yes," she murmured. "I sense them too."

As if to affirm their presence, the squad of super battle droids on the hill above them opened up with a round of blasterfire from their wrist weapons. Two of the armored clone troopers fell with gurgled cries, their armor pierced and blackened. One of the droids fired off a rocket dart from a wrist launcher, but Eerin's lightsaber snapped out to swat it from the air, and it exploded a safe distance from her body.

A-51, too, raised his weapon and unleashed a round of destructive blue blaster bolts upon their adversaries, and the fight ended mere seconds later, the droids suddenly sadly outmatched.

The clone captain surveyed their losses. Three clone troopers killed, one apparently wounded, fourteen remaining completely intact. A-51 mentally credited himself with most of the droid kills, of which there appeared to be twelve, though a few of the broken chasses were so mutilated as so to make estimating the droids' numbers substantially harder.

"CT-Nine-Eight-Two Ten, how's that shrapnel wound?" the Jedi General inquired, stepping over to gaze down at his punctured leg. Red blood seeped out of the slashing wound, staining the white armor, dappled with a personal touch of light blue spots, surrounding the breach.

The trooper's breath came in short gasps, and A-51 could feel little but contempt for the grunt, knowing full well that he himself would hardly even notice such an injury.

These clones were not like him at all.

The question, as some philosophical babbler (or a Jedi, as the two terms had been all too interchangeable as the Clone Wars neared their end) might phrase it, was simply put, _how different can two clones of the same man be? _A-51 knew the answer.

Same genetic stock, sure. Only he was strong and they were weak. They believed that they were the strongest military units to see service in the entire galaxy when all they had to compare their prowess to on an ordinary basis were battle droids. Mindless, unthinking, mechanical battle droids. They had received training that was tough by ordinary standards. A-51 had visited each of the nine Corellian hells in quick succession, over and over again, every day of his life since he was of a biological age of four years old when he was on Kamino, only to be chilled down and put into hibernation because the Jedi hadn't been ready at first to deal with an entire army composed of raw Jango Fett.

Clone troopers were prided by their Kaminoan technicians and their commanders on their ability to think for themselves, unlike battle droids such as the ones that had attacked them earlier. As such, they thought likewise.

The difference was that A-51 had freedom of choice and expression, and the conformist clones were genetically programmed not to.

"I'm all functional, General," the wounded clone trooper, CT-982/10, said at last, still breathing heavily and raggedly, "except for this left leg. The shrapnel hit the left side of my calf, and I think it cut a few ligaments, ma'am. I don't think I can walk on it."

Eerin glanced back at the anonymous helmeted visor of A-51, behind which lay the face of a clone, identical to the face of this melodramatic trooper sitting propped against a rock bleeding, also concealed behind a plasteel helmet of similar design.

Without waiting for Eerin to ask him, A-51 spoke up. "Elevate his leg and if the wound is too painful, sedate him. We can bring him back to -" He was interrupted by the chime of the comlink built into his helmet. "One moment, General, transmission."

Using the tongue comm switch, he snapped the comlink on to _listen_, keeping his own helmet comm speaking externally so that only his weak clone companions and General Eerin could hear him. He could change the setting should he be expected to respond, but something told him that the speaker on the other end didn't need to hear his reply.

His suspicions were almost immediately confirmed.

"Execute Order Sixty-Six," a harsh, croaking voice came in over the comm, freezing the hot clone blood in A-51's clone veins.

Order 66. The order for the clone troopers of the Grand Army of the Republic to immediately kill all nearby members of the Jedi Order. It would reprogram a clone's behavior, A-51 knew. His pattern of thinking, his code of ethics (which were already limited besides).

The standard clone infantry of the Republic, and their offshoots - pilots, turret gunners, BARC units, commandoes, and such - could not refuse an order from this high office, and the transmission had been sent from Coruscant itself and had been identified on his HUD display as being the voice of the Supreme Chancellor, who must have come down with a sore throat or something.

But A-51 was different.

A-51 was an ARC trooper.

ARC troopers were not programmed to unquestioningly follow any order. They were not genetically engineered to be polite or docile. They were more Jango Fett than Republic clone trooper, because that was their mission profile: everything.

ARC troopers were the best of the best. They could fulfill almost any task. It was said that one ARC trooper was the equivalent of one hundred clone troopers, and entire squads were deployed on Muunilist and Hypori, among other locations. An entire battle group in a squad of half a dozen troopers.

But most importantly, A-51 was not engineered to accept orders unthinkingly. He didn't have to follow. It was just generally assumed that he _would_ follow, being a soldier under a commanding officer (usually a Jedi) on the field.

But this time, did he want to follow?

Yes, he was fed up of General Eerin's earnestness and over-restrictive moral code that drove her to cry out, "Do not kill them!" every time they encountered wets on the battlefield. Yes, he was sick of her orders and her cheap magic tricks. Yes, he hated her lectures on the preciousness of life and the intuition of the Force, and he wished she would just quit with her second-guessing of his tactical knowledge drilled into him since he was nine months old.

But did he want to _kill_ her?

He considered. What had the Jedi done that he had truly wanted to kill her for, but dared not act against a Jedi? What had she done that was worthy of his respect?

And abruptly, it clicked. She had done the most heartless and the most compassionate thing that anyone possibly could have done. She cared about her soldiers. She didn't recognize them as faceless grunts, as _abominations_. She didn't just want them to be used as bantha fodder. She cared too much, to the point where she couldn't leave a soldier like CT-982/10 to die when he was no longer useful to the mission or capable of independent movement (and A-51 hadn't even bothered recommending this course of action, knowing how fast she would shoot it down). She cared too much about their enemies, and if droids had any degree of actual sentience, as might a protocol droid who had gone too long without a memory wipe, A-51 would have bet the entire sabaac pot that she would have tried to get them to simply disable them temporarily as well.

She cared. And now she would die.

Order 66 had another meaning: it justified the on-the-spot execution of the Jedi by identifying them as traitors and enemies of the state. A-51 could have laughed. He had known Jedi, known Bant Eerin, for two years. They were gentle - yes, too gentle. They were compassionate - overly so. _The ways of the Jedi are not the seeking of power_, General Eerin had once told him. _They are the seeking of justice and the defending of the innocent. That is at the core of every Jedi's heart. _And somehow, he couldn't help but believe her. What else was he to think?

A Jedi coup had no motive. The Jedi, in sanctimonious earnest, always seemed to see what was in store for the galaxy and wanted to guide it to its best outcome - they had no personal agendas like the politicians scheming on Coruscant, plotting the death of the Jedi…and simply for being in their way? All too possible. The Jedi would contest anything that Coruscant's clandestine leaders did to put themselves ahead of the galaxy, and maybe they couldn't risk that. _Who's betraying who here? _he wondered, anger beginning to flood through him.

Were the Jedi traitors? Certainly not. And even though A-51's heart sang with his certainly that General Eerin was innocent, he knew the fate that would befall her - the fate that he, A-51, was expected to administer.

But ARC troopers can resist. ARC troopers can refuse. And, A-51 reflected, that was probably the reason that so many of them had been decommissioned in the recent months since the engagement on Cato Neimodia. The faceless politicians on Coruscant only were interested in troopers who would never fail to follow orders, not troopers who could actually think like _real men_. He, A-51, was one of maybe a dozen who were still active throughout the galaxy, a great distinction indeed; actually, A-51 more than half suspected that a few of the military officers on the field (and maybe even some of the Jedi), who actually had the capacity to appreciate the ARC troopers' personality and fire probably even more than their quite enviable skill, had conveniently "forgotten" to communicate the hibernation order to their ARC trooper units.

But as A-51 traced the timeline of the Wars and the rapid retirement of nearly all ARC trooper units still active around the galaxy since the Battle of Cato Neimodia and measured it against the capacity of an ARC trooper to refuse an order, it seemed more and more to suggest that the betrayal of the Jedi Knights had been planned now for at least six months, carefully saved for such a time where the Separatists were in retreat and their leadership was in shambles. So the Jedi Knights, all around the galaxy now, could all be dying at once in only a few seconds. There_ was a great disturbance in the Force for you_, he thought bitterly. And all they might have done was to get in the way of the Chancellor and his cronies' self-bettering plans.

And now they had stripped their soldiers of their already limited freedom and independence, and they were about to strip General Eerin of her life. Payment for her dedication to seeing justice brought to the galaxy's denizens without bias.

She didn't deserve it. The ARC commando _knew_ she didn't deserve it. Bant Eerin, Jedi General, Hero of Kubindi, would die for her simple compassion, and that was all of the story that A-51 knew, or was interested in knowing. Bant Eerin was about to die. But would A-51 have to be the one to do the deed?

"No."

His voice was soft, his traces of Concord Dawn accent barely coming through over the external helmet comm. Only a brief couple seconds had passed since Order 66 had been given to the clone troopers on Sluis Van, and elsewhere around the galaxy, but that was all the time it took for the clone trooper grunts - they who did not have a choice as to whether or not they would heed the call to arms against the Jedi who had led them, directed them, trained them, and cared for them - to raise their DC-15 blaster muzzles.

And fire.

Eerin's already massive eyes grew wider, and she activated her lightsaber again, spinning the blade to deflect the blue blasts harmlessly off into nowhere.

And A-51 raised his repeating chain blaster as well. And like his comrades, firing upon his poor betrayed Jedi General, he squeezed down the trigger as well.

It was said that one ARC trooper was the equivalent of one hundred clone troopers. He hoped that even if this was an exaggeration, he was at least the equivalent of fifteen clone troopers.

The battle was joined. Even crippled CT-982/10 was firing at the Jedi who had been preparing to do her all to heal his injuries, to make him comfortable and safe until their mission was over. She was staving off the assault, and there - she hewed one clone trooper in two, but received a blaster shot to her left shoulder in return. She made a sound of pain, but A-51's defiant blaster rounds chewed through the clone bodies of those hard-eyed stormtroopers. Miserable clones, these Wet Droids; reduced from cannon fodder to pawns of a cruel genius. No one could say now that these clones, programmed just like battle droids to obey even the foulest of orders without question, had freedom. They fired again and again at the twirling blue ribbon of light that spun from General Eerin's flipper hands like some bizarre gymnast.

Then she missed.

She missed.

Bant Eerin's pulsing blue lightsaber swung up to deflect a blaster bolt into the torso of one trooper, then it dropped down to block another one that her Force magic tricks had sensitized her to.

There exist no magic tricks that never go awry.

One blaster bolt, then another, then another, caught her right below her dipping blade, straight into the center of her body. She cried out and her bulbous eyes misted over as she collapsed, her lightsaber hilt destroyed by another blast that was too late for her to sense, for by the time it struck home, Bant Eerin had already passed into the Force.

And with his blood coursing hot and his nerves screaming for vengeance, the rebel ARC trooper swung the rapidly firing repeating weapon's long muzzle from side to side, strafing the clones who stood over the amphibious, salmon-skinned body of silver-eyed Bant Eerin. But in his hurry to eliminate these clones - _no hard feelings_, he thought to himself savagely as he killed - he did not lower the blaster's tip to accommodate for CT-982/10, propped against that blaster-chipped boulder. He remembered the injured clone too late, and his sudden flash of recollection coincided with a sharp, hot agony in his breast. Whether the remembrance came before the blaster shot or after, A-51 would never know.

As more carbine bolts from the clone trooper's weapon struck his armored torso, proving to him firsthand that it wasn't as armored as he would have preferred it to be, A-51 fell to his knees. His mortality was more apparent than it had even been before.

Though the chain blaster had fallen to the ground with a dull _thunk_ that had barely registered into A-51's pain-ridden mind, he still had something available.

The last physical action of A-51, ARC trooper captain, was to draw the DC-17 holdout commando pistol on his hip to shoot CT-982/10 dead, aiming right for his throat.

And as A-51 pitched forward onto his stomach, guarded now only by smoking, charred armor that was once a proud gray-white tone, while silently watching the helmeted head of CT-982/10 tumble from his shoulders, the lesser clone's neck vaporized by his pistol's blaster bolt, his last thoughts were simply a reflection upon the last thirty seconds of his life.

What a price more than what A-51 had paid, that the ARC troopers who simply complied to conform would pay, losing all that once made them as close as any clone in the Grand Army of the Republic, now perhaps not so grand, to being a real live human being.

He had always thought of death as being the ultimate sacrifice. Now he knew that he was wrong.

The loss of freedom was the true ultimate sacrifice; the loss that made one's own will irrelevant, the loss that meant the death of hope. A-51 had been able to choose. It was more of an evil than any Jedi's death that the other clones had not been endowed with that essential right. And then he understood them, and then he pitied them, and had he time left in his fading mortal shell, he would have wept, wept for all of his misjudgments, wept for all of his disdainful sneering, wept for all those clones who could not choose whether or not they would gun down Bant Eerin who had led them with her selfless devotion and love. He would have wept, but he had no time left in which to do so.

What had he been fighting against with such hatred for those poor clone troopers? Their actions were not their fault. The blame rested on a greedy and self-serving Senate, a Senate that he had rarely before had occasion to question. It led the Republic, and so it led him.

But it did not lead his heart.

Though A-51 knew that his actions were of little overall consequence; that in the scheme of things more sinister still to come, he would just be a minor little blip to be conveniently ignored, he could still find his pride as not simply a clone, but as a man, for he had been given his choice to make and he had done the right thing that his companions physically could not. It was pride which many, clones and non-clones alike, could not share with him. Indeed, not all of those who were without their pride were denied that essential right to choose, as those manufactured assembly-line clone troopers were.

His breathing became shallow and his heartbeat slowed. He could have left the mortal plane behind in a mental maelstrom of agonized reflection on what was now and what could have been. But all that mattered now was what he himself had done at the end, that one little word that sealed his fate and that one little word that had made all the difference in his genetically accelerated life.

A-51 carried his own pride and spared no more thought to tragedy for the remaining few seconds of his life as he lay dying there on the rocky dirt of Sluis Van, in the shadow of its massive shipyards many hundreds of kilometers above.

_I said no. I said no._

_I said no…_


End file.
